Previous research has documented trends of increasing alcohol consumption among college students along with a decrease in religious-identification. A new study examined the differences in religious self-identification (i.e., “unsure”, “spiritual” and “religious”) and alcohol use among college students. Participants (N = 166) were undergraduate students attending a mid-sized, mid-western university. Participants completed an online survey, which included the Religious Background and Behavior Survey and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). The survey provided the students with an opportunity to self-identify as an atheist, agnostic, unsure, spiritual, or religious, and to indicate their drinking behaviors during the past week. The survey also measured binge drinking by asking participants how many drinks they consumed within a two-hour time period. Lastly, the survey measured frequency of drinking by having students self-report the number of days in which they drank an alcoholic beverage. The authors used one-way ANOVA and chi-square tests to explore the differences between the variables. Results showed that 16.6% of participants were unsure of their religious beliefs, 28.3% identified as spiritual and 45.25% identified as religious. Participants who identified as unsure about their religious beliefs, reported drinking an average of 2.30 alcoholic drinks in the past seven days, those who reported being spiritual drank an average of 5.45 drinks, and those self-identifying as religious drank 3.16 alcoholic drinks. No significant difference was found among the self-reported alcoholic drinks that each group consumed in the past week. As for excessive drinking, with higher AUDIT-5 scores indicating higher at-risk behavior with alcohol, participants who were unsure of their personal beliefs about religion had a mean score of 9.24 (SD = 2.53); participants who self-identified as spiritual had a mean of 8.98 (SD = 2.44); and participants who self-identified as religious had a mean of 8.67 (SD = 2.83). While the means suggested a trend of participants with a stronger religious belief having a lower AUDIT-5 score, no significant differences among the three groups were identified. Moreover, no significant difference was identified between the three groups in regards to binge drinking behaviors (p = 0.13). With respect to the frequency of drinking, there was a significant difference with participants who identified as religious consuming alcohol the least while participants who identified as spiritual consuming alcohol on the most days of the past month (p = .005)
Take away: While students who identified as religious participated in binge-drinking behaviors, they still consumed alcohol less frequently than those who identified as spiritual or unsure.